Erick Widman is an immigration attorney who has seen firsthand how the immigration system in the United States fails to attract and retain innovators, leaders and entrepreneurs. His experience marrying a Hungarian American woman gave him a personal perspective on the importance of this issue. Listen to learn how he believes the U.S. could better serve the immigrants who enrich our country.
Transcript
Denzil Mohammed: Welcome back to JobMakers. The immigration system in the United states is complex, to say the least. Visa categories for nearly every letter of the alphabet, exemptions, restrictions, rule changes with every new administration. We need more workers, innovators and entrepreneurs in an increasingly competitive world and amid an historic worker shortage and cash strapped social safety systems due to a graying workforce. So does the United States’ immigration system work in its favor? For Erik Widman, immigration lawyer and founder of Passage Immigration Law in Portland, Oregon says it does not. We routinely turn away ambitious, risk-taking people at all skill levels high and low, which the country needs. From vaccine creators to crop pickers, the U.S. throughout its history has depended on the sweat and brainpower of immigrants who largely go on to become the next crop of Americans. Erik guides us through the immigration process for agricultural workers, international students, high school workers, and people with extraordinary ability. He shows us the myriad ways Americans benefit from their work and he shows us where we fall short, shooting ourselves in the foot because of a hijacked immigration discussion, as you learn in this week’s JobMakers podcast. Erik Widman, founding attorney at Passage Immigration Law in Portland, Oregon, thank you for joining us on the JobMakers podcast.
Erik Widman: Thank you so much, it’s a real privilege to be here.
Denzil Mohammed: To be clear you’re not an immigrant, but you have a lot of experience with immigration both in and outside of the U.S., is that right?
Erik Widman: Yes, yes. My grandpa Sven came from Sweden, but I was born in the U.S. and we’ll discuss it later, I’m sure, how I immigrated to Hungary periodically, for a couple years prior.
Denzil Mohammed: So who exactly is Erik Widman?
Erik Widman: Yes, so I’m from California. I’m an immigration lawyer who grew up in a really diverse environment in Cupertino, CA. In my high school, caucasians were the minority. We had lots of lots of Asians there, so there’s a lot of diversity that I experienced growing up and I got to spend a summer, really formative experience, in Japan living there as a junior hire and that led me to study international relations, focus on international business law in law school and then I taught in Hungary after that and met a Hungarian woman who is now my wife and we have three dual-citizen kids.
Denzil Mohammed: That’s terrific. So, as I mentioned, you have tremendous experience with immigration both here and abroad. As someone who’s gone through the immigration process both as an immigration attorney and with your wife in Hungary, tell us a little bit about the immigration process, and how is it different?
Erik Widman: Yes, so the U.S. system is known as an incredibly complex set of rules and changing priorities and it’s similar to the U.S. tax code in that it keeps expanding in complexity. No one ever reduces complexity, it’s just more and more tricky and it’s very politicized. So there are policies that seem to bounce back from one direction to the other depending on which administration is in power and so the timeline is quite long for immigrants in general, even before COVID for immigrants to go through the process in the U.S. and comparing ourselves to Canada or most European countries, they’re more efficient and they can get people permanent residence, work permits faster. So that’s why it’s really a real competitive issue for the U.S.
Denzil Mohammed: You bring up the tax system. You know, byzantine is one way to describe the immigration process here. You have visas from A-Z with, you know, numbers and everything in between. It’s so much to digest. It’s not just in terms of speed, right, with these other countries, it’s targeting who they want, right?
Erik Widman: Right, yes, yes. The U.S. has a quota system which, in many ways, is unfair and certain nationalities have a very long wait time. So Indians, Mexicans, those from the Philippines, Chinese, have a really long wait time to get green cards because there’s a cap on how many from each nation can be allowed into the U.S. So that definitely impacts the type of the nationality, the type of immigrant we have. And so it’s not just a long wait, it’s an insurmountably long wait period for those who have one of those nationalities that’s got a massive backlog.
Denzil Mohammed: And it doesn’t work in their favor, the immigrants’ favor, and it just doesn’t work in America’s favor either. And I want to point out specifically the crisis that we’re facing right now, and I really want to get your comments on it. The U.S. is facing historic woes in terms of the current labor shortage, they’re more than 10 million job openings and only 5.7 million unemployed people to fill them. Now at the start of the pandemic necessarily perhaps the Department of State canceled all visa services at embassies across the world, but even when they started reopening later that summer, processing was so slow and sluggish that the U.S. missed out on 2 million working age immigrants who would have come here with certain skill sets with educational backgrounds, and would have eased the labor shortage we’re experiencing right now. So, again, two things stand out about this, firstly that we could have had two million more immigrants who could have significantly eased this worker shortage and the little known fact that one visa category did, in fact, keep going throughout the suspension of all other categories; the H-2A visa for temporary agricultural workers. They kept us fed, they kept picking fruits, they kept all groceries supplied. Tell us a little bit about the importance of low skilled workers, and why do you think they kept that one visa category going?
Erik Widman: Yes. Thankfully, Congress listened to our farmers, the agricultural companies that produce our food and we would have been in big trouble as a nation, especially under COVID we still would be in big trouble if we didn’t have this flow of H-2A workers or immigrant, non-immigrant workers who come in for a season, a temporary period of time and do the really tough work that we drive by most people who are not in the agricultural industry. We can see them working the fields, they’re bent over. Incredibly difficult work that some people even die in the really hot conditions out there, so these jobs are tough, they’re not desirable and part of the American dream is that people don’t want to do these jobs long term. The immigrant comes in because he or she’s willing at that skill level to do that really tough work and then they’re thinking about their family and their kids. They think, “Well, my kids will be able to get an education, do more.” But it is a true win-win when we have our agricultural needs met and people who live in essentially absolute poverty throughout the south of the border in various countries are happy to do this tough work. They can save up money and buy a house and support their grandparents with this money.
Denzil Mohammed: So you started to describe this kind of worker and you’ve done some immigration work in this field as well, so could you sort of describe more about who these agricultural workers are, how they end up in the U.S., how they’re recruited, what are some of their characteristics?
Erik Widman: Yeah, so the H-2A agricultural worker is someone who has experience. They go through recruitment agencies, individual recruiters, they work directly with farms to bring in these folks who are really a stellar group of people. They are searching for any opportunity they can get, but by and large, wonderful family people and the recruiters are choosing those who don’t have a criminal record. Those who are great hardworking people with a track record of being really diligent.
Denzil Mohammed: So we need those workers who can pick the fruits that we eat, but of course as you know and I know, we also need workers and innovators who can perform feats of science and keep the U.S. at the cutting edge of technology innovation, don’t we?
Erik Widman: Yes and the businesses that are competing globally and are really tough environment, Intel for example, is here in almost like a life or death struggle against other companies trying to create the best possible microprocessors. And the founder of Intel said, “You always have to be paranoid. Only the paranoid survive,” and interestingly, he was an immigrant from Hungary. So I’ve got the Hungarian connection there. But Andy Grove, the founder or cofounder of Intel was a Hungarian immigrant. So the paranoid survive, it’s a brutal capitalistic clash of companies and we need people who are amazing at math, science, STEM fields, and right now, we’re not graduating enough native-born Americans with these intense PhD programs, computer science, chemistry, physics. When I worked at Philips Electronics, I was asking some of the LED lighting PHDs, “Is what you do more physics or chemistry?” and they love describing the details, but it’s both at the microprocessor level, they’re getting into just like things I don’t understand, nanometers of complexity. So we need super smart people to do this and we’re not graduating enough, and so the companies are hungry for them and they’re typically from countries all over the world that are traditionally strong as science; Chinese, Taiwanese, many Europeans. There’s a big need for this.
Denzil Mohammed: I like the example you just rolled up because one thing that’s often brought up on this podcast is the need for diversity of thought, diversity of backgrounds in order to come up with a finished product. And you talk about Intel and its co-founders, I would bring up Pfizer and Moderna in the U.S., right here in Boston actually where foreign-born and U.S.-born people co-founded these companies and together they come up with the most brilliant things like the COVID-19 vaccine. Similarly in Germany, it was German and immigrant inventors who came up with, was it the biotech vaccine over there. So there is truly magic that can be created by having this diversity of thought, we need more people in STEM, we need more Americans in STEM, certainly. But frankly, and the data bears this out, without immigrants, without international students, STEM programs across the country would be suffering and probably have to close.
Erik Widman: To our credit the university system is attracting them, we want to attract them, we want to be known as the best university system, we want to be known to be the best environment to really grow your career. And so I love stories exactly like the development of the COVID vaccine where you have the best and brightest from each country participating to provide the best product. That’s what our sports teams do, you encourage labor mobility, the best people who can perform.
Denzil Mohammed: And that’s inherently capitalistic, right, just an economy that attracts the best and the brightest in order to succeed.
Erik Widman: Yes. Yes and I think one of my main messages to those who are more skeptical of the value of immigration is that if we’re in favor of a free market, if we’re in favor of the best can achieve and succeed, we should be in favor of labor mobility so that we can allow the best people from around the world to come in and compete and get those jobs as we need them because our companies will certainly benefit.
Denzil Mohammed: You talk about labor mobility. What is our current system to allow the best and the brightest or those who want to come and study or work here and what are some of the shortcomings?
Erik Widman: The pathway to come to the U.S. as a student knowing you’re going to get a great education in any state in the union, even if you don’t have a Ivy League brand name, many people from all over the world, it’s still prestigious just to go to a small town school because it’s an American school so we have to maintain that prestige and after that they often do this what’s called OPT: Optional Practical Training and they can work in their degree field for a year, either pre-completion OPT, post-completion and they work for a company for a year then if that company is impressed, which they often are, they file for an H-1B, petition for H-1B professional worker visa to give that immigrant a chance to work for them. Right now unfortunately, there’s only a 30 percent chance that they’ll be selected in the lottery. So it’s more likely than not, that because of the the cap, because of the limited number of H-1B visas and the increase in demand that exceeds that, so then they have to look at other options and many keep going to college and get a higher degree. But there’s also an extraordinary ability visa, which is an increasingly positive option for, and something that we’ve had to rely upon, when people can’t get an H-1B for example. But it’s hard to be extraordinary in your career when you have all this potential but you’re only 23, what can you accomplish at that point? So sometimes we can connect the dots for USCIS and show them that they are extraordinary even with just a couple of years under their belt of work experience.
Denzil Mohammed: And just to be clear, when you talk about the H-1B high skilled worker visa there is a cap, there is a certain number that are issued and because there are so many applications they actually have to have a lottery system in order to choose and meet that cap. So thousands upon thousands of other people, high skilled immigrants, are deliberately-they’re just tossed away they left out.
Erik Widman: There’s an element of luck and this seems very un-American. It doesn’t seem like we’re choosing the best and allowing the best to work for us. We want to give more opportunities to these people. It’s a free market, that’s what we should support more, but it’s not a free market for the immigrant.
Denzil Mohammed: And it’s not advantageous to us if we are deliberately telling people, “Nope! You have to go back. No more room.” And you mentioned the extraordinary ability visa, tell us a little bit more about this visa and the kinds of people who may qualify and some of the things that they accomplish in the U.S.
Erik Widman: Yes, and everyone would love to be called extraordinary and so it’s, there’s a high bar. Most of us unfortunately cannot be cost truly classified as extraordinary …
Denzil Mohammed: Hey!
Erik Widman: … but with, yeah, it’s, we all should aim for it, that’s for certain. But, the challenge is to show why this particular applicant truly is at the top of his or her field. A Taekwondo expert from Hungary, so that was someone else we helped. He was world champion, he was happy to teach Oregonian kids and build his business and help his employer with that. We’ve also had the O-1 approved for an amazing Chinese artist, for example. He was rather young, recent graduate from school, but a world class painter. And so we were able to show, please give this person a visa. He is going to make an amazing contribution, his employer wants him and please grant this pathway to this amazing, extraordinary individual.
Denzil Mohammed: And indeed these incredible people, the best and the brightest come to this country and keep it innovative and entrepreneurial, and I really admire the diversity of people you’ve described from Taekwondo champions to artists, I mean that’s pretty incredible. But research from our own partners at the Institute for Immigration Research at George Mason University shows that even up to one-third of our Nobel Prize winners are immigrants. Is that incredible?
Erik Widman: That statistic stuns me and it’s remarkable to hear it and it’s a beautiful thing too, to look at the way, for example historically we welcomed Albert Einstein, we’ve welcomed all these individuals who went on to do amazing things for our country and the entire world. So I’m always moved by statistics like that because we enable the greatest people, people who are amazing at their fields to achieve to their full potential and that is what makes the U.S. the land of opportunity, is where we give people a platform to really thrive and get access to resources and government funding for in some cases.
Denzil Muhammed: So it’s not just industries that are attracting people, it’s our higher education system, people who come here and do postdocs and they collab, importantly, they collaborate with U.S.-born researchers at these universities and they come up with the most incredible inventions and theories and they win the Nobel Prize for it. But it’s America who gets the credit and rightfully so because we are the ones attracting these bright people, right?
Erik Widman: Absolutely.
Denzil Mohammed: So before I get to my last question, just comment on what we’ve spoken about so far, about the need for high skilled and low skilled immigrants, on the inherently entrepreneurial nature of immigrants. Just sort of comment on that for a little bit before we close.
Erik Widman: Yes, the need for immigrant labor is strong on both the higher end of the spectrum, lower end, in the middle and listen to these thought leaders like Elon Musk, like many who have credibility would … I know he’s a controversial figure these days … but who understand groundbreaking big thinkers and they see that if as a population continues to age we’re going to need people to take care of them. We’re not going to have the tax base, Social Security is in big trouble, we’re not having enough kids to fund all of the money we’re gonna have to pay for our health care system. So one of the few pathways open to us is more immigrant labor and historically, we have done a great job of welcoming people from all over the world and incorporating them into our society and their kids go on to be amazing contributors on their own and they are 100 percent American.
Denzil Mohammed: It speaks to what or who is an American. It’s not defined by how you look, how you speak, what you wear, it’s something much more intrinsic about being an American, and that is something multitudes of people can share. And that’s what American society is and has always been.
Erik Widman: Yes and I encourage people to look at the oath of allegiance when people are becoming citizens and people are proudly saying, yes, I’m willing to support the U.S. Constitution. And I think fundamentally that is what unites us, is our core commitment to one another through these founding principles of liberty, democracy, fair opportunity, the rule of law, those things are what unite us and it’s too bad we’ve been sidetracked by more peripheral things these days, but the core of what unites new Americans and native-born Americans, it’s still there.
Denzil Mohammed: This was a really good conversation. Erick Widman, immigration attorney, founding attorney at Passage Immigration Law in Portland Oregon, thank you for joining us on the JobMakers podcast to talk about immigrant workers, immigrant entrepreneurs, immigrant innovators and immigrants in general.
Erik Widman: Thank you so much, Denzil. It was a real pleasure.
Denzil Mohammed: JobMakers is a weekly podcast about immigrant entrepreneurship and contribution produced by Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston, and The Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, Massachusetts, a not-for-profit that gives immigrants a voice. Thank you for joining us for this week’s discussion and how our immigration system falls short when we need it most and the glimpse into what we should do about it. If you know an outstanding immigrant business owner or innovator we should talk to, e-mail Denzil, that’s D-E-N-Z-I-L at jobmakerspodcast.org. I’m Denzil Mohammed. See you next Thursday at noon for another JobMakers.